talking about computers and design
by Ralph Grabowski

May 09, 2008

TIP: Use Memory Cleaner with AutoCAD 2009

Working with AutoCAD 2009 the other day, it suddenly complained of a lack of memory. The Vista computer upon which I am running it has 2GB RAM and 92GB free disk space.

Earlier, I found a memory cleaner that frees up memory that's being hogged by applications. When I ran it, it reduced the amount of used RAM from around 1500MB down to the normal 1000MB. After that, AutoCAD was happy again.

I now run Memory Cleaner just about every day after using AutoCAD 2009. You can get a copy of the utility from www.vasileios.gr/freesoft. (Strictly speaking, it is a graphical frontend for Vista's own FreeMem command. Mr Vasileios also has a version for XP.)

Comments

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You shouldn't have to do this - this should be considered a bug, and a serious one at that

AutoCAD is a demon for hogging and leaking memory. I've had a support ticket in for 18 months about the massive memeory leak in the Attribute Extraction Wizard which they didn't want to fix - the ticket is still open. The only way to release the memory (850MB is my record so far) from that one is to do another extraction or shut down AutoCAD.

That's why the AdskCleanup service exists - to mop up after their leaky C++ code. It's a great argument for managed code

I don't know the Memory Cleaner tool, but judging from its own description, it's probably just a placebo: "Front-end for Microsoft's command line ClearMem ( Windows XP ) and FreeMem ( Windows Vista ), which force pages out of physical memory and reduce the size of running processes’ working sets, to a minimum."

If this description is accurate, all this tool does is accelerate something which Windows does for you anyway - when applications fight for RAM, the OS will start reducing the working set of one or more applications which are in the background or idle.

The same effect can be achieved most easily and without loading any extra tools by minimizing the applications which you want to force out of RAM. To witness the effect, run any CAD app, load a large model, then check the app's "Mem Usage" value in Task Manager. Now minimize the app and watch its "Mem Usage" plummet to a few MB. Restore the app and click some menus in it to watch it slowly page in data again.